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Snow Tubing Save
Location: Laramie, Wyoming Date: February 13, 1988 Story On February 13, 1988 in Laramie, Wyoming, some teenagers in a local church group, including seventeen-year-old Shawna Williams, headed out to go snow tubing. Shawna's mother, Donna, had organized the outing that day. Shawna's best friend, Leah Meredith, watched from nearby. "There was no stopping that inner tube at all because it was going so fast," said Leah. Tanna fell out of it and hit a tree face first. There was blood and some cuts on her face, but she wasn't badly hurt. Leah noticed that Shawna was still in the tube, it was going fast, and Donna screamed for Shawna's life. It slammed into a tree and then stopped. "I ran up there, asked Shawna if she was all right, her head popped back, and her eyes opened like big saucers," said Donna. Donna thought Shawna was dead. A bystander ran to get some help. EMT Jim Shows happened to be cross-country skiing in the area. "I didn't have any medical equipment at all," said Jim. Once Leah realized that Tanna was going to be okay, she ran down to Shawna. "She had not gotten up and I realized that something was wrong," said Leah. "I asked, 'Are you okay?' and she said, 'Mom, am I dreaming? Wake me up, I can't feel my legs,'" said Donna. Jim came out of nowhere and did an initial assessment on Shawna. "She had no feeling in her legs and she was also complaining of some severe chest pain," said Jim. Her level of conscious was going down and they had to get her out of the mountain. A call for help sent a Laramie medic fire department to the scene. "Time is critical, if she had a ruptured aorta or anything like that, so we fashioned her to mobilize her the best that we could," said Jim. The EMTs pulled Shawna out of the tube and onto a board to carry her up the mountain to the ambulance and belted her safely so she wouldn't fall off. "They picked her up off the hill and she said, 'Mom please don't cry, Mom please don't cry,' and I told her that I would not cry if she didn't cry, we kind of made the impact, and we tried to be as strong as we could," said Donna. Shawna was rushed to Ivinson Memorial Hospital where ER physician Dr. Kerry Silen took over her care. "A portable X-ray machine was brought in and we immediately took X-rays of her lateral spine from the neck clear down to the lower back," said Dr. Silen. Shawna's father, Richard, headed to the hospital as soon as he was notified of the accident, where Donna explained what had happened. "My initial reaction was that she maybe had a pinched nerve or something along those lines," said Richard. From an examination of Shawna and her X-rays, orthopedic surgeon Dr. David Keefer determined that her spinal cord was cut in half and she was paralyzed from the chest down. Dr. Keefer spoke to Richard and Donna in the hall and told them that he would consider Shawna a paraplegic from this point forward. They began to cry and Donna thought to herself that Dr. Keefer couldn't be telling her this because Shawna loved to ski, ride bikes, and dance. Shawna was then transferred to Craig Hospital in Denver to begin daily physical therapy to build up her strength and learn how to cope with her new limitations. "The rehabilitation was probably the hardest thing I ever had to go through in my life," said Shawna. "She was so strong. Richard and I were sitting in there one day, he put his head down on his arm and started to cry, and she reached over with her hand and said, 'Don't cry, Dad. It's not so bad,'" said Donna. Four years have passed since the accident. Shawna now lives on her own and works at a bank, but is confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Category:1988 Category:Wyoming